This chapter describes the large-scale narrative and musical patterns of serious Hollywood combat films made after Vietnam. Two larger narrative shapes are identified: two-part forms (such as ...
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This chapter describes the large-scale narrative and musical patterns of serious Hollywood combat films made after Vietnam. Two larger narrative shapes are identified: two-part forms (such as training camp followed by battlefield) and alternating action-reflection forms. Then, the overall shape and content of combat film musical scores are described in a comparative context. Four strategies for the use of music in war films are described: films with very little music of any sort, films which alternate between scored and unscored scenes (Saving Private Ryan), music-laden films with music noticeably present much of the time (Born on the Fourth of July), and films with almost continuous music. The frequently blurry distinctions between sound effects and music, the role of popular music (Full Metal Jacket), the importance of diegetic silence, the ambiguous authorship of some film scores (Apocalypse Now, The Hurt Locker), and the shifting nature of the soundtrack mix are also considered.Less

Soundtracks and Scores

Todd Decker

Published in print: 2017-02-28

This chapter describes the large-scale narrative and musical patterns of serious Hollywood combat films made after Vietnam. Two larger narrative shapes are identified: two-part forms (such as training camp followed by battlefield) and alternating action-reflection forms. Then, the overall shape and content of combat film musical scores are described in a comparative context. Four strategies for the use of music in war films are described: films with very little music of any sort, films which alternate between scored and unscored scenes (Saving Private Ryan), music-laden films with music noticeably present much of the time (Born on the Fourth of July), and films with almost continuous music. The frequently blurry distinctions between sound effects and music, the role of popular music (Full Metal Jacket), the importance of diegetic silence, the ambiguous authorship of some film scores (Apocalypse Now, The Hurt Locker), and the shifting nature of the soundtrack mix are also considered.

The contribution of the American film industry to the war effort can be divided chronologically between preparatory propagandist films and combat films. It was the feature films that constituted the ...
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The contribution of the American film industry to the war effort can be divided chronologically between preparatory propagandist films and combat films. It was the feature films that constituted the most visible, accessible and influential product for home and international audiences, and the ‘most potent weapon of war in Hollywood's arsenal’. The proficiency of Hollywood in the production of genre films was an advantage for the delivery of formulaic war films, which were in any case derived from pre-war generic staples. These war films represent the American film industry's most prolonged and committed engagement ‘in documenting and making American history’. John Ford's They Were Expendable bears comparison with In Which We Serve as the definitive naval war film and tribute to the US Navy. The history of US naval aviation, from its inception to the arrival of jet aircraft, is recounted through documentary footage and fictional characters in Task Force.Less

Hollywood and the one-ocean war

Jonathan Rayner

Published in print: 2007-03-31

The contribution of the American film industry to the war effort can be divided chronologically between preparatory propagandist films and combat films. It was the feature films that constituted the most visible, accessible and influential product for home and international audiences, and the ‘most potent weapon of war in Hollywood's arsenal’. The proficiency of Hollywood in the production of genre films was an advantage for the delivery of formulaic war films, which were in any case derived from pre-war generic staples. These war films represent the American film industry's most prolonged and committed engagement ‘in documenting and making American history’. John Ford's They Were Expendable bears comparison with In Which We Serve as the definitive naval war film and tribute to the US Navy. The history of US naval aviation, from its inception to the arrival of jet aircraft, is recounted through documentary footage and fictional characters in Task Force.

Hymns for the Fallen listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in ...
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Hymns for the Fallen listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to stimulate reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies—such as Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper—as well as lesser known films, Todd Decker shows how the domain of sound, an experientially rich, culturally resonant aspect of the cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience’s engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation. Hymns for the Fallen explores all three elements of film sound—dialogue, sound effects, music—and considers how expressive and formal choices on the soundtrack have turned the serious war film into a patriotic ritual enacted in the commercial space of the cinema.Less

Hymns for the Fallen : Combat Movie Music and Sound after Vietnam

Todd Decker

Published in print: 2017-02-28

Hymns for the Fallen listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to stimulate reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies—such as Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper—as well as lesser known films, Todd Decker shows how the domain of sound, an experientially rich, culturally resonant aspect of the cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience’s engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation. Hymns for the Fallen explores all three elements of film sound—dialogue, sound effects, music—and considers how expressive and formal choices on the soundtrack have turned the serious war film into a patriotic ritual enacted in the commercial space of the cinema.

This chapter tells the story of the OSS Field Photographic Unit (FPU) and its impact on American cinema and society. Led by the legendary Hollywood film director John Ford, the FPU produced training, ...
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This chapter tells the story of the OSS Field Photographic Unit (FPU) and its impact on American cinema and society. Led by the legendary Hollywood film director John Ford, the FPU produced training, reconnaissance and propaganda films for the CIA’s wartime predecessor. In doing so, it is argued here, they made a significant contribution to what theorist Paul Virilio termed “the logistics of perception”, or the ways and means by which war is perceived. By helping to transform the second-hand experience of war from a predominantly textual to a mostly visual experience, the FPU left a profound legacy.Less

The Facts of War: Cinematic Intelligence and the Office of Strategic Services

Simon Willmetts

Published in print: 2016-05-01

This chapter tells the story of the OSS Field Photographic Unit (FPU) and its impact on American cinema and society. Led by the legendary Hollywood film director John Ford, the FPU produced training, reconnaissance and propaganda films for the CIA’s wartime predecessor. In doing so, it is argued here, they made a significant contribution to what theorist Paul Virilio termed “the logistics of perception”, or the ways and means by which war is perceived. By helping to transform the second-hand experience of war from a predominantly textual to a mostly visual experience, the FPU left a profound legacy.

The introduction lays out the structure of Hymns for the Fallen in broad strokes, noting the chronological scope of the study (35 war films made after the close of the Vietnam War), the subgenre ...
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The introduction lays out the structure of Hymns for the Fallen in broad strokes, noting the chronological scope of the study (35 war films made after the close of the Vietnam War), the subgenre (prestige combat films) and the book’s larger approach to film sound and film music. The three elements of the soundtrack—dialogue, sound effects, and music—and their relationship analytically within the book are also introduced. The book’s larger analogy between serious war films and war memorials, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is drawn by comparison of scenes from Hamburger Hill (1987) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). The formative impact of the Vietnam War on Hollywood combat film production is also noted. The figures of the American soldier and veteran are presented as central both to combat film narratives and to the target audiences for these films.Less

Introduction

Todd Decker

Published in print: 2017-02-28

The introduction lays out the structure of Hymns for the Fallen in broad strokes, noting the chronological scope of the study (35 war films made after the close of the Vietnam War), the subgenre (prestige combat films) and the book’s larger approach to film sound and film music. The three elements of the soundtrack—dialogue, sound effects, and music—and their relationship analytically within the book are also introduced. The book’s larger analogy between serious war films and war memorials, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is drawn by comparison of scenes from Hamburger Hill (1987) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). The formative impact of the Vietnam War on Hollywood combat film production is also noted. The figures of the American soldier and veteran are presented as central both to combat film narratives and to the target audiences for these films.

Post-Vietnam Hollywood combat filmmakers set aside the most common musical trope of earlier war movies: the military march. Instead, new musical tropes were developed, initially in the 1980s Vietnam ...
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Post-Vietnam Hollywood combat filmmakers set aside the most common musical trope of earlier war movies: the military march. Instead, new musical tropes were developed, initially in the 1980s Vietnam cycle. A particularly unstable musical register, here called veil music, uses musical texture rather than melody or meter to expresses a range of equivocal combat states, most related to the foreignness of the battlefield for the American soldiers at the center of these films. In the Vietnam cycle, veil music is connected to moments of moral liminality, when surprising acts of violence might be done. Examples from Platoon and Full Metal Jacket are discussed. Veil music in war films set in the Middle East often characterize the Arab other by way of untranslated singing voices, putting exotic musical tropes to rather generalized uses characterizing the foreign other. Examples from The Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down, and Three Kings are analyzed.Less

Unmetered

Todd Decker

Published in print: 2017-02-28

Post-Vietnam Hollywood combat filmmakers set aside the most common musical trope of earlier war movies: the military march. Instead, new musical tropes were developed, initially in the 1980s Vietnam cycle. A particularly unstable musical register, here called veil music, uses musical texture rather than melody or meter to expresses a range of equivocal combat states, most related to the foreignness of the battlefield for the American soldiers at the center of these films. In the Vietnam cycle, veil music is connected to moments of moral liminality, when surprising acts of violence might be done. Examples from Platoon and Full Metal Jacket are discussed. Veil music in war films set in the Middle East often characterize the Arab other by way of untranslated singing voices, putting exotic musical tropes to rather generalized uses characterizing the foreign other. Examples from The Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down, and Three Kings are analyzed.

This chapter, written by Jeffrey Geiger, explores interconnections between aerial perspectives and the moving image at a time when technological advances were producing a myriad of new ways of coming ...
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This chapter, written by Jeffrey Geiger, explores interconnections between aerial perspectives and the moving image at a time when technological advances were producing a myriad of new ways of coming to terms with an increasingly globalized world. Aerial life was transforming social perceptions of space and terrain, and influencing how those spaces were managed and controlled. Along with the panorama, elevated and aerial views would therefore become central instruments in conceiving and grasping what Heidegger called the ‘world picture’. Focusing on the strategic uses of panoramic and elevated views and, especially with the coming of the Second World War, aerial photography, this chapter calls for a more dialectical reading of the role of cinematicity and the aerial view in modern perception, one that emphasizes how the aerial subject simultaneously can encompass seemingly opposed experiences of abstract distancing and emotional connection, ‘objective’ overseeing and embodied feeling.Less

Making America Global: Cinematicity and the Aerial View

Jeffrey Geiger

Published in print: 2013-12-30

This chapter, written by Jeffrey Geiger, explores interconnections between aerial perspectives and the moving image at a time when technological advances were producing a myriad of new ways of coming to terms with an increasingly globalized world. Aerial life was transforming social perceptions of space and terrain, and influencing how those spaces were managed and controlled. Along with the panorama, elevated and aerial views would therefore become central instruments in conceiving and grasping what Heidegger called the ‘world picture’. Focusing on the strategic uses of panoramic and elevated views and, especially with the coming of the Second World War, aerial photography, this chapter calls for a more dialectical reading of the role of cinematicity and the aerial view in modern perception, one that emphasizes how the aerial subject simultaneously can encompass seemingly opposed experiences of abstract distancing and emotional connection, ‘objective’ overseeing and embodied feeling.